emlyon is one of France’s top business schools and also one of the global leaders in the teaching of entrepreneurship and the fostering of start-up businesses.
Part of the ongoing strategy agreed between emlyon and BlueSky is to secure media coverage around new books written by the school’s faculty to demonstrate their expertise in key business areas. In this case BlueSky was tasked with publicising a book on ‘strategic surprise’ written by Professor Phillipe Silberzahn and due for publication in early 2013.
In February 2012, BlueSky Education put together an idea for an article that related to the Professor’s upcoming book, and pitched it to the Forbes Leadership Editor. The article was commissioned, and BlueSky Education worked with Professor Silberzahn to structure the piece. Once the Professor had approved the initial structure, BlueSky Education adapted it into a 700-word version and came up with a suitable title. This article was posted on the Forbes website, and attracted over 3,500 page views.
Following the success of the initial article, BlueSky Education returned to Forbes’ Leadership Editor in April 2012 with a second article idea from the Professor, based on the lack of creativity at Microsoft. The piece was timed to coincide with the launch of the Microsoft tablet. The article was to be written by Professor Philippe Silberzahn. Forbes commissioned the article, and once again, BlueSky Education worked with the Professor on content and style. A total of three drafts were written until everybody involved was satisfied with ease of read, and coherent flow.
BlueSky Education offered Forbes three possible titles for the article including "That's All Folks: Why the Writing is on the Wall at Microsoft", which was the one chosen by the Editor.
The article attracted over 10,000 page views within the first 12 hours of it being posted, and was picked up as a lead story on the Forbes.com home page. This generated a high volume of call-outs and comments on the page, which BlueSky Education aided Professor Philippe Silberzahn to answer.
To date the article has attracted over 84,000 unique page views and the Forbes Leadership Editor subsequently offered Professor Silberzahn a permanent contributor post on the Forbes platform.
“This is exactly the sort of media visibility that we were aiming for.”
Professor Phillipe Silberzahn, emlyon